


Plastic Taste

by cherryblur



Category: Twenty One Pilots
Genre: Burns, Homelessness, M/M, Permanent Injury, Prostitution
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-14
Updated: 2019-02-14
Packaged: 2019-10-26 14:56:08
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,843
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17748014
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cherryblur/pseuds/cherryblur
Summary: In which Tyler’s lips bleed and Josh works Monday through Thursday.





	Plastic Taste

The first time Josh sees him is on the street. He’s shivering, thin and pale underneath a yellow hoodie that was more mustard than sunshine.  
His lips were bleeding. 

He doesn’t try to ask if the kid’s okay, because he’s obviously not.  
He stands and lets the snow whip him from side to side while he struggles to keep a cigarette lit. 

Josh doesn’t even know if that cigarette was lit in the first place. 

He tries to forget him, the dude with the matted brown hair and watchful, dark eyes that followed him long after he turned the corner. 

The next day he’s still in his spot. Josh just wants to get to work on time.  
He’s seated now, legs bent inwards on the cracked steps of an abandoned apartment building. He sings under his breath and Josh sees he finally got his cigarette lit. 

He’s late for work and can’t find an excuse for his boss.  
Yellow hoodie is still there the next day, glaring at by-passers until Josh stops in front of him. It’s Friday, his day off.  
His weekend, which he should really be spending at home in a blizzard like this. 

“Hey,” He’s tense, his whole body is.  
Maybe it’s just the cold. 

Unforgiving eyes bore through his body and drink him in. “Hey.” 

Josh feels awkward. “Um, can I-can I help you out? Somehow? You look really cold, man.”  
The brunette snorts into the filter of his cigarette. 

“Nah. Don’t think you could help. Unless you’ve got a light?” He says it like every other bum that Josh has seen standing outside of bars and clubs. 

He shakes his head. “I quit years ago. Sorry.” 

Yellow hoodie sucks on his scabbed lower lip. “S’fine.” He shrugs. 

“I’m Josh.” 

“Tyler.”  
Tyler. A name to give such a delicate face. Delicate at one point in his life, maybe.  
“So, you come to harass bums on the street a lot?” Tyler’s got a snarky voice, one that matches his crooked nose and even crookeder teeth. 

Josh screws up his face. “No. I see you every day when I walk to work. Don’t you have somewhere to stay? It’s freezing out.” He doesn’t know why he feels offended, or why he lets Tyler dig so deep with his words.  
It was just a sarcastic comment. 

He fumbles with the stubby cigarette left between his fingers. Josh stares at how much he shakes.  
His hands, mostly. They’re gross.

Scarred. Puffy, covered in what look like sloppy skin grafts. His fingertips crack and and weep red onto the pale paper of his now discarded cig.  
He ignores the eyes on him and sucks the blood clean from his digits. 

Then he’s back in that position. Arms crossed, body hunched.  
Protective. Closed off.

He doesn’t pay attention to Josh’s question and just shakes his head, mouth twitching like he’s expecting it to open and say something for him. 

Josh deems this boy stable enough. 

“You wanna get a drink?” He asks. It’s almost dark out. Probably 5:00. His voice raises a bit because the wind has started up again. 

Tyler hesitates. Looks up and searches Josh’s face for something he must look for a lot.  
Then he stands, hands stuffed in the kangaroo pocket of his hoodie. He shrugs again and laughs a little.  
“If you’re buying.” 

•

Josh doesn’t drink. He only does it on occasion, really.  
He’s passed his second whiskey and feels tipsy while Tyler downs his fourth glass of gin and rests easy. He lights another cheap cigarette and the bartender informs him he can’t smoke. 

He fizzles it out and sticks it back in his pocket without comment. 

They don’t talk. Not much, anyway. Tyler doesn’t reply to his chat. He looks anxious and rips skin from his cuticles. His index finger cracks and bleeds all over a napkin. 

Josh doesn’t know why he does this, pays for some homeless kid’s drinks. 

He’s about to say something, but then Tyler’s dragging him back to the bathrooms and locking the door behind them. 

“Should be good,” He mutters, then he’s dropping to his knees. 

“What’re you doing?” He watches the brunette, thighs trembling and chest heavy as bleeding fingers work at the zipper on his jeans. Tyler doesn’t seem bothered by the grime already soaking through his pants. 

He ignores Josh and has a rough hand palming through even rougher denim. He swallows thickly and Josh watches his Adam’s apple bob. 

“Tyler, stop.” He’s pushing back, stepping away, trying to say _no_. 

“This is what you paid for,” Tyler says through the cigarette he just put out. He’s still sitting in the filth of the bathroom floor like an apostle ready for prayer. Or a line of coke.  
“Free drinks for a blowjob. Yes or no?” 

Josh is drunk, but not enough. “ _No_. No, T-Tyler, get up, man.” He’s the one shaking now. He’s so cold, and he’s bundled in jackets. 

Tyler stands and blinks at him confused. He looks sad. His lip has split open and gushes blood over his chin. He licks what he can and wipes the rest on his hoodie sleeve.  
He swallows again and looks small underneath Josh. 

“Is this what people do?” Josh has to blink many times to keep the room steady and he’s frowning.  
“Buy you drinks then...use you?” 

Tyler rips a paper towel off from the automatic machine beside him. He soaks up liquids he dare not try to name from his jeans and wads it up.  
“Yeah. Sometimes they just pay me. ‘Cause they feel bad.”

He wipes his runny nose with the wet paper towel before letting it fall into the trash can. He shoves his hands back into his pockets. “What now? You don’t want sex, so what am I supposed to do?” 

Josh furrows his eyebrows. “I don’t understand. What d’you mean?” He’s trying, trying so hard to find something in those broken glass eyes that he could latch onto. 

Tyler grimaces and the split on his lip spreads wider. “How am I gonna pay you back?” He spits. He’s dirty. Dirty and cold and Josh is pulling him into a hug faster than he thought he would.  
He smells like cigarettes and pool chlorine. 

“Let me help you. Please, you can stay with me and I can help you get back on your feet. I know you proba-“

Tyler pushes away.  
He’s fuming. Teeth grit, eyes flaring and fists clenched. His voice cracks but never leaves the bite of venom behind.  
“Fuck off. I don’t need help. I’m not gonna be your little sob story fuck-up that you ‘saved’ so you can tell your friends how much of a selfless person you are. I’m not homeless, and I don’t need your _fucking_ help,” He storms out of the bathroom, out of the bar, and leaves Josh with a half-chub and $70 tab. 

•

Josh stays home all weekend because, why would he go out? It’s freezing. Snow piles in front of his door and he knows he’ll have to push it out of the way Sunday night. 

He doesn’t walk past those old cement steps until Monday, when he’s trudging to work alongside dozens of other men and women. He indulges in a quick glance to see if he’s there. 

Tyler isn’t. Josh doesn’t care, though, so he keeps going and keeps his gaze straight when the brunette is stumbling out of the bar across the street with a limp and bloody nose. 

Josh keeps his head down the whole week. Tyler isn’t his business, isn’t his problem. He shouldn’t have stuck his big nose in the issue anyway. 

He tries no to jack off to the thought of what Tyler’s blowjob could’ve been like, but does it anyway. 

He doesn’t care. 

•

It’s Thursday night. The news babbles about snow storms and negative temperatures when Josh tucks into take-out Chinese, and hell, maybe a blunt if he was really feeling it. 

Three sharp knocks on his door break him away from his concentration.  
It’s Tyler. Cold and wet and bleeding from his stupid cracked lips.  
“Hey.” He bites at the ragged flesh and rips chunks off. Josh curls his lip in disgust. 

He doesn’t bother letting him in. “Why are you here? Did you run out of dicks to suck?”  
Tyler punches him square in the face and pushes into his apartment with a snort.  
“Nah. Just got lonely. And cold. It’s supposed to be, like, -15, y’know.”  
He echoes the television and cracks his gross scabbed knuckles against each other. 

Josh is reeling and blinks stars from his vision before he takes in the blood starting to ooze from his nose. It doesn’t hurt as much as he thought it would, honestly. Tyler packed quite a wimpy punch, but hit the just the right nerve to bust open a wound. 

He’s settled himself on the couch and pops a piece of orange chicken in his mouth. “It smells nice in here,” He comments and licks sticky sauce from the divots in his bottom lip.  
Josh wads a tissue up his nose and decides it’s definitely not broken. 

_“How did you find me?”_ Is his first question, but he knows it’s useless to ask. So instead he slumps onto the couch and grabs the container of pad Thai.  
“Thanks. My mom sends homemade candles for Christmas.” He sticks a pair of chopsticks in the mess and hopes he doesn’t get a splinter. 

Tyler nods and sticks his grimy fingers into the egg rolls. “Sorry for hitting you. S’a sensitive subject. D’you have soy sauce?” 

Josh digs through the paper bag covered in logos and tosses him a packet. 

The brunette rips it open and sucks it dry. He looks over and raises his eyebrows before flicking the empty plastic onto the coffee table.  
“Iron deficiency. You can get more from salt,” He informs Josh’s confused face. 

“Really?” He frowns and looks at the tiny bruises littering Tyler’s hands. He wonders what he looks like under the hoodie. 

Tyler shoves an egg roll into his mouth and shrugs. “Something like that.” 

•

Josh gets head that night, head so good he almost rips strands from Tyler’s sticky mess of hair and curses more than he has in a decade. 

The brunette pulls off after an hour (“Antidepressants and orgasming aren’t really on the same wave length.”) and tells him he tastes like cinnamon gum.  
He palms himself and eats the leftovers of Josh’s pad Thai with his five free fingers. 

Josh sits back and pants through the end of his high, face still red. Tyler digs through the Chinese bag and pulls out the rest of the soy sauce packets.  
He’s got a bottomless stomach. The pad Thai is gone in minutes and he’s biting through a third egg roll when Josh finally has the courage to say something. 

“You didn’t have to do that.” 

Tyler shrugs and picks at his teeth with a dirty thumbnail. His thumbs remind Josh of the flattened pennies at the aquarium.  
“I wanted to. You have a nice dick,” His tongue squeaks against his canines when he sucks remnants of food from the cracks. Then he’s got the rest of the orange chicken in his hands and he’s done talking. 

Josh watches the politics end of the news and doesn’t care when his phone reads midnight. He doesn’t work tomorrow anyways.  
Tyler chews loudly and glances over with his mouth full. “RedBull?”

He’s clutching a can like it’s his life force a minute later and sips it carefully. He’s leaned back, comfortable. A hand pulls his hoodie up and he shows Josh his distended belly like a prize. It’s littered in scars and bruises criss-crossing every which way. 

He rubs it happily, hums like it’s a baby growing nestled inside him.  
“Haven’t eaten that good in months. Maybe years,” He tips his RedBull can back and Josh watches his throat constrict when he swallows. 

He falls asleep and Tyler polishes off the rest of the food.  
He doesn’t sleep. 

•

The next morning Josh wakes up with a crick in his neck and someone in his kitchen. 

Tyler is still there, rifling through his fridge and sipping a glass of expired orange juice.  
Josh rubs his eyes and tries to remember what he did last night. 

“I should be going.”  
He realizes the brunette isn’t wearing his trademark hoodie and frowns at what he sees.  
He’s shirtless, covered in more bruises that overlap and yellow around the edges in some places. 

What looks like a few unfinished tattoos beam from his chest.  
Josh can see his ribs poking out, each and every bone showing a new type of struggle. 

He sees that the skin grafts on is hands go up to his wrists and stop, like he didn’t have enough to finish the procedure. The rest of the skin lining his arms is veiny and scarred with scattered burns, not grafts or cuts. 

Tyler still pats his stomach like it’s God’s gift to him.  
“Where are you going?”  
He acts like this question is a death sentence. 

“Home, probably.” 

Josh sits up. “You mean the sidewalk steps?” 

Tyler sticks his head in the fridge.  
“Yeah.” 

“What happened to your hands?” 

He finishes his orange juice and sets the glass next to the sink. Josh licks plaque off his teeth with his tongue. 

“D’you have any weed?” Tyler sucks blood from his top lip and scratches his greasy head. 

“No. What happened to your hands?” 

The brunette stops. He stares at the ground and makes a whistling noise between his teeth. “I fucked ‘em up in fryer oil.” 

Josh winces. “On purpose?” 

Tyler nods. “Pretty gross. Everyone was screaming, someone threw up. I just stood there like a kid caught with their hand in the cookie jar and waited for the ambulance.” 

He picks at his cuticles. “I couldn’t afford the real treatment so they gave me old pig skin.” He peels back a fingernail that’s grown too long, seemingly surprised it grew at all.

Josh stays quiet for a long time.  
“I’m sorry,” He mumbles. 

Tyler just laughs. “Nothing for you to be sorry about. I’m the one running. You really don’t have any weed, though?” 

He’s ignored until Josh pulls out blunt he was saving for that Thursday night. 

•

They get high on Josh’s couch and Tyler doesn’t leave. He stays and kisses him with his chapped, bloody lips and lets him clutch his fucked up hands. 

He’s tangled on Josh’s lap, still shirtless and yawning in his arms.  
“I wanna fuck you,” He says it and pops his lips. Josh is so close he can see the pimples forming beneath the stubbly skin on his face. 

“Okay.”  
And he’s pushed back, helpless and tripping when Tyler, who doesn’t wear a condom and fucks him drier than needed, tells him how much he loves him. 

Dirty noon light seeps in through Josh’s blackout curtains.

He holds the blunt in one hand while the other grasps Josh’s hips so hard he bruises them. He grunts and the couch wheezes below them. 

Josh doesn’t come. He’s too high and too far along with his antidepressants for Tyler to care enough.  
He’s already pulling out sticky and tries to jack him off giggling. 

Instead he uses his mouth and swallows what isn’t all over his chin. 

“Stings,” He mumbles and laps sticky white from the cuts in his lips. He pulls out a cigarette and sticks it in the side of his mouth. 

Josh tugs on his dick and watches Tyler’s shaky fingers flick a lighter until he’s puffing smoke through his nose. 

“I think I love you,” He gurgles through bloody lips and takes another drag. 

•

Tyler rides him that night. Pushes him back onto his own bed and chaffs his thighs until they’re covered in bumps and inflamed. He babbles about how much he loves him. 

Josh just thinks he needs a warm body.

•

Tyler says he feels hollow without drugs in his system.  
They lay in bed and watch documentaries about serial killers.  
He rambles about coke addictions and heroine. Josh watches Jeffrey Dahmer smile at the court and hums. 

“You should probably shower,” He says after Tyler goes quiet.  
“You smell like blood.” 

•

On Sunday night Josh tells him he can stay. 

So he leaves.

•

Josh watches Tyler stumble day after day and night after night from that bar across the street. Sometimes he’s giggling and sometimes he cries with a hand over his mouth. 

It’s not really his business. 

•

He comes knocking once in a while, always with his cracked lips and eager mouth. Josh indulges him and even slips him a few bucks to keep him steady. He feels like a charity. 

“Why don’t you stay?” He says one night after Tyler wipes his chin with his sleeve. 

“I don’t like pity,” is his bullshit answer. 

Josh scoffs. “It’s a good thing I don’t like you, then.”

Tyler stays and lets him kiss those fucked up hands of his.

**Author's Note:**

> im sorry if this isn’t good. im not very proud, but it took a lot of effort to not post.


End file.
